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Leaflet Distributed in Boston

By Ron Newman

[Note from archiver: I have tried to format this document roughly according to the formatting instructions Ron originally put in the text]. I distributed the following leaflet at last night's annual meeting of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. Feel free to reproduce or adapt it to your own needs.

Protect Free Speech
on the Internet!

A religious cult calling itself the "Church" of Scientology is trying to suppress Internet discussions of its beliefs and actions.

In the past five months, they've

  • tried to remove the Usenet discussion group alt.religion.scientology

  • tried to censor that discussion group by deleting ("cancelling") articles posted by opponents of the cult

  • misused the authority of Interpol to violate the confidentiality of a Finnish "anonymous remailing service", and e-mailed legal threats to operators of other anonymous remailers

  • obtained, under false pretenses, a "civil writ of seizure" from a Federal judge in San Jose. With this improper court order, they invaded the Glendale, California, home of Dennis Erlich, a former minister (and current opponent) of the cult. Starting at 7:30 am and continuing for over six hours, representative of the cult ransacked Erlich's house, copying and deleting large numbers of files from his computer hard disk and floppy disks. This search and seizure was not properly supervised by either police or Federal marshals.

  • Filed a Federal lawsuit against Erlich, his bulletin board service, and his Internet service provider (Netcom), claiming copyright and trade secret infringements. (How can a religion have Rtrade secretsS?) The suit seeks to prevent Erlich from further participation in the Internet discussions of Scientology. This is a SLAPP suit (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation), clearly intended to deprive a critic of his right to free speech.

  • Sent private detectives to harass a number of other opponents of the cult who participate in the Internet discussion of Scientology.

Scientology's hostility to free speech goes back long before the Internet. The cult has harassed countless writers and journalists over the past 25 years. They've tried to keep hostile books off the market, and filed numerous groundless libel and copyright-infringement suits against their authors and publishers. They even managed to get one critic, writer Paulette Cooper, indicted for sending a bomb threat. Years later, Cooper discovered that Scientologists had stolen stationery from her apartment and forged that bomb threat themselves.

For more information on all of the above,
read this World Wide Web page:

http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/rnewman/scientology/home.html

After you read this, I hope you'll agree that it's time to shut down the Scientology barratry machine. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has recognized that Scientology's suit against Dennis Erlich is a threat to everybody's free speech on the Net. Please send donations to

The Electronic Frontier Foundation
1667 K Street, NW
Suite 801
Washington, DC 20006

Make checks out to "Electronic Frontier Foundation", and write "Dennis Erlich Defense Fund" on your check.

This leaflet is a private effort. It was not funded or authorized by Dennis Erlich or the Electronic Frontier Foundation.